Proposal Preparation: Preliminary Stages
All Federal RFPs, virtually all State and Local RFPs, and most private
foundations include the name and contact information of a program officer
or another party to contact with questions about your proposal. Contacting
these individuals is essential at this stage of the proposal development
process. Unfortunately, it is the part of the process most likely to be
overlooked, especially by less experienced applicants.
The process of
submitting a grant application should not be confused with submitting an
article to a peer-reviewed journal. In the latter case, scientific merit is
the only evaluation criterion (at least ideally). While scientific merit is
a primary criterion in the grant review process as well, many things in
addition to scientific concerns are taken into consideration during the
grant review process. Researchers who have served on review panels state
that in a typical round of funding, only 5% of all proposals have science
that is so strong and of such obvious merit that funding is assured. 30%
are dismissed out of hand for not meeting some type of administrative,
budget or submission requirement. The remaining 65% are proposals with good
science that could yield interesting or important results if funded. There
are always more worthwhile projects than there is available funding.
Contact with the sponsor's program officer will clarify what additional
evaluation criteria exist (if any) and help you develop your proposal to
address them effectively.
Given that evaluation
and judgment are key components of the grant review process, there is a
bias towards seeing the relationship between sponsor and applicant as
adversarial. Keep in mind that it is in the sponsor's best interest to
receive the largest possible number of strong proposals that meet their
specific objectives, and the job of the program officer is to insure that
this happens. Even in instances where the guidelines are clear and you do
not have any specific questions about the application process, personal
contact with a program officer is still important at this stage. A round of
funding might yield, as an example, ten proposals evaluated as
"fundable" during peer review when funding exists for only three.
It is the program officer's responsibility to decide among them, and your
personal contact can work to your advantage, particularly if you have never
received funding from the agency before. Some other purposes this contact
serves:
- Agencies with broad
mandates or which issue general guidelines in support of research in a
large disciplinary area usually have expectations about the types of
proposals they would like to see and will tell you what these are if
you ask. For example, the Department of Defense recently issued an RFP
for research into behavioral and biomedical factors affecting
leadership, an area where TC has significant expertise. The RFP included a
long list of potential areas of research, including sleep disorders.
However, when a Psychology faculty member doing research in sleep deprivation
inquired, she was told that the agency would not be particularly
receptive to a sleep deprivation study at this time. While that was
not the answer we wanted to hear, it saved the faculty member the
enormous effort of preparing a proposal for the rapidly approaching
deadline and helped us to consider alternatives. Often, program
officers have suggestions about more appropriate funding resources for
your proposal.
- NIH publishes a list of its
review panels on its web site at www.csr.nih.gov. Program officers are
your best source for this information at other agencies. While there
is never any guarantee your proposal will be sent to any one
particular review panel, getting some sense of who may be reviewing it
can be extremely useful during the development process.
- Most requests for proposals
will tell applicants the total funding available during a particular
round and the total number of anticipated awards. Program officers can
provide additional guidance about appropriate budget requests.
- A conversation with a
program officer about program objectives can often reveal the
vocabulary in current use at the agency. What words or phrases does
the program officer use to describe programmatic goals or
methodologies? Incorporating that vocabulary into your proposal
demonstrates that you are in tune with the current priorities at the
agency and not just within your field.
Initial contact with
the program officer can be via either email or telephone. If you get no
response to one, try the other, but keep in mind a real conversation is
ultimately more revealing than an email exchange.
If you do research in
an area that is regularly supported by one of the Federal agencies, it
behooves you to make contact with the program officer even if you don't
currently have plans to submit a proposal. Try to arrange a meeting if you
are ever in the Washington
area. Program officers travel to research sites to meet investigators as
well. As a long-term career strategy, establishing yourself as a review
panelist at the Federal agencies is an excellent way to gain an inside
track and get a valuable perspective on the review process before you
submit a proposal of your own. You can volunteer your services directly to
a program officer, but you will be more successful if another panelist or
funded researcher recommends you.
The effort you make to
establish contact with the program officer during proposal development can
reap enormous benefits after the review process is concluded. Most projects
in this highly competitive arena will not be funded the first time around.
If yours is one of them, the program officer can provide you with much more
detail than the reviewer's comments as to why it was rejected; you can also
gain insights into non-scientific factors that may have affected the review
process. These insights can be crucial as you revise to resubmit. Program
officers at this stage will often provide you with a realistic assessment
of whether it is worth your while to revise and resubmit.
The other pivotal step
at the preliminary stage is a preliminary review of the resources necessary
to carry out a project. Some factors to consider:
- Expertise: Do I have the necessary
expertise and credentials to serve as sole PI on the project or do I
need to team up with another researcher in the College or at another
institution? Junior faculty in particular should be aware that
agencies fund investigators whom they have supported in the past and
naming yourself as Co-PI on a project headed up by an investigator
with a proven track record significantly increases your chances of
success.
- Facilities: Does TC have the
facilities necessary to conduct the project? If not, partnering is
once again an effective strategy. Major equipment purchases are
sometimes appropriate budget requests. However, your proposal will be
less attractive if it competes with institutions that already own the
equipment/facilities in question (unless the RFP is specifically
targeted to improving facilities and research capacity).
